Just in time to make me look like an utter ass in yesterday’s groan-fest post about how impossibly cold and dreary it is here this winter, Cincinnati decided to mysteriously warm up to the mid-30s today (which feels like a day at the beach compared to what we’ve had lately) and the sun darted out from hiding for a few brief and fleeting minutes this afternoon. Great timing Universe. But the sentiment is appreciated nonetheless. I knew you still had it in you, Cincy! My penance for doubting was having the hiccups four times today. I thought that was a little extreme, but the Cincinnati weather gods don’t mess around.
I’ll give you my Tuesday in a nutshell – smoked butt, dreamy hues, passports, and food. From the complete oddity of these mismatched descriptions, you can probably tell I am learning that the grown-up world is not without its hodgpodge moments, frivolity, and un-calculated randomness. I used to think that surely only teenagers and college students dwelt in a life of such random, scattered and opposing thoughts. Married adults were wise and competent. Furthermore, they had their lives “together” enough that their minds certainly weren’t being pulled in every such direction, from serious to silly and necessary to whimsical.
I retract these prior musings from my younger, more foolish days. If anything, as we age, our lives and thoughts get weirder and even more random because we’re responsible for our own happiness and well-being – meaning we have even more to think about if we want to be on top of our game! Back to the smoked butt, dreamy hues, passports and food with thoughts that range, respectively, from calculated to arbitrary to necessary to practical. I’ll explain.
My mom used to make this fantastic meal when I was growing up. It’s pretty basic but definitely a down-home comfort food. It consists of slabs of smoked Boston butt (which is essentially a juicy pork shoulder) dipped in mustard, and cooked cabbage, carrots and potatoes, all drizzled with butter and salt. Whenever mom made it, a smoked butt would appear in the fridge – just like that! Clearly this is something that is readily available at any grocery store, I assumed. Fast forward to now as I spend hours online searching for a butcher or meat specialty store in Cincinnati that carries a small smoked Boston butt to fulfill my Friday night dinner plans. Who knew finding one of these suckers would be so complicated!? I mean, don’t they just appear like my mom’s did? I’ve since learned that my grandma brought them down to Texas from Illinois, which is beside the point. Today, I finally found a butcher shop where I could special order a small boneless butt and have it smoked – and I did. HA! I win! All this for a Friday night dinner – that’s the calculating world of adulthood – you plan ahead.
Onto the arbitrary. Dreamy French-inspired nail polish colors – I can think of nothing more fanciful or unnecessary than this. I’m usually too lazy to bother with the upkeep of painting my nails, but every now and then a season’s most trendy colors catch my eye and I simply fall in love with them – enter these unusual, yet marvelously romantic colors from the spring 2011 fashion scene.
Unabashedly arbitrary, right? But they’re so unexpected, neutral and pretty! They’d be especially edgy when paired with darker colors like black or deep purple.
After contemplating something that took calculated planning ahead, and something entirely silly, like nail polish, I moved onto something totally necessary and ridiculously expensive – passports. My current passport is set to expire in 2016. I used it when I studied abroad in Stratford-Upon-Avon my junior year of college, and for the best-graduation-present-to-myself-ever: a fantastic Caribbean cruise to Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Mexico with a group of friends. Now that I’ve entered the blissful world of married life and have embraced my new moniker, the U.S. Government wants me to do something excessively wasteful like send them a check for $110 to change the last name on my passport so we can go on our honeymoon. Are you serious!? Who has $110 just laying around that they want to fork over for someone to spend 5 minutes reprinting something as small as a single, simple passport? How can that possibly cost $110 in supplies and labor? I smell a ripoff. But, apparently, if I want to spy the Aurora Borealis from the peaceful, steaming waters of the mountain-backed Blue Lagoon I intend to soak in, or sprawl out in a river-traveling gondola whilst making googly eyes at my husband and stuffing myself silly with fettucini and gelato (and I do), I have to get an updated passport. It’s a money-suck necessity.
And finally, my thoughts turned to something perfectly practical: food. More specifically, dinner. Because when you no longer live with mommy and daddy, your hot, fresh meals do not simply materialize on the table when your tummy grumbles. Tonight I’m going for healthy and balanced but savory – grilled fish, steamed and seasoned vegetables, and whole wheat brown rice it is! And the strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert? Not so much healthy (though I did use a low-sugar recipe) but most definitely delicious! And those were my thoughts for the day. A mighty collage of this and that, but isn’t that just the way it is when you’re 19, or 27, or 45 or 78?
